BRIAN LOWRY wrote:Joining Spider-Man in the annals of dizzyingly rapid reboots, Fox’s second stab at “Fantastic Four” comes just eight years after the first try and its sequel, which didn’t set the bar inordinately high. Yet if this latest version, with a significantly younger cast (one’s tempted to call it “Fantastic Four High”), clears that threshold, it’s just barely, drawing from a different source to reimagine the quartet’s origins without conspicuously improving them. All told, the movie feels like a protracted teaser for a more exciting follow-up that, depending on whether audiences warm to this relatively low-key approach, might never happen.

Moriarty wrote:Neither the disaster the fanboy nation seems to be itching to attack nor a significant improvement over the Tim Story movies, "Fantastic Four" seems doomed to please no one. If this were simply a science-fiction film about original characters, it would be a moderate pleasure that can't quite connect all the dots or pay off the various ideas it introduces. As an adaptation of the comic, it seems to miss nearly everything that seems exciting about "Fantastic Four" as a filmmaking opportunity, and it will only serve to reinforce the idea that these characters don't work in a movie.

James Whitbrook wrote:Speaking to the New York Daily News, producers Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker clarified that actually, the movies weren’t connected at all—and they actually take place in parallel universes to each other:

They exist in parallel universes. The Fantastic 4 live in a world without mutants. And the X-Men live in a world without the Fantastic 4.

Crossing them over would be challenging, but we sure would love to see all those actors together, the way we had them on stage at [San Diego] Comic Con.

I saw this movie. Are they on Krypton?Walking out of the theater was like walking out of a funeral.Kids were crying in the hall.People were stunned.One kid asked for Stan Lee. Everybody in that screening now has a bond:We survived the Fantastic Four reboot!

Marianne Zumberge wrote:“Fantastic Four” is struggling to find its footing at the box office this weekend, suggesting that not even superheroes are immune to poor reviews.

Early estimates show the 20th Century Fox release struggling to hit $30 million for the weekend, which is well below the anticipated mid-$40 million mark. Should the estimates keep plummeting, the opening could prove disastrous for the studio, which spent $120 million on the pic.

Thursday night previews for “Fantastic Four” pulled in a lukewarm $2.7 million at 2,900 locations.

The last major superhero release to premiere under $35 million was Sony’s “The Green Hornet” in 2011 ($33.5 million).

Brian Lowry wrote:For years, the Fantastic Four immodestly bore the title “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” Introduced in 1961, the title ushered in the age of Marvel Comics, inaugurating the creative explosion of writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, which has been compared in musical terms to John Lennon and Paul McCartney during the Beatles’ heyday.

All of that makes the rather tortured history of the franchise on screen, especially given the current ascent of comicbook blockbusters, all the more perplexing – most recently with Fox’s reboot “Fantastic Four,” which comes eight years after its last live-action effort, a sequel subtitled “Rise of the Silver Surfer.”

Not only has the project been bludgeoned by critics, but the director, Josh Trank, responded by implying that the studio, Twentieth Century Fox, was responsible for its failings. Whatever the underlying truth, for comicbook fans it raises the specter of the bad old days, when studios abused comics by refusing to take the source material seriously.

You're right it's my vision, lets be 100% honest here, it is my vision Fox hired me to do my vision and to make sure they get a quality film and they're getting both; since day one people have created rumors and lies about me and my film going from found footage to me tearing up that house. Was I distant? Yeah. I was, if you were on the set of a huge film with Mathew Vaughn and half of Fox breathing down your neck to deliver a film on a specific date and to rush through everything you'd do everything possible. Yeah, I wanted to extend the boundries; FX supervisor got OTOY to do some good quality work which looked great in the dailies but not what I wanted. Look okay, here's what I'm trying to say if you want your fantastic four, if you want the real first family, if you want Doom ruler of Latveria, if you want Frank and Val Richards if you want the power cosmic or even the bombastic bagman then yeah my story isn't for you but at the end of the day they still exist in your heart and in your mind and in the pages of marvel comics I was hired to write and direct a film and to make it what I thought would be a new way to do it and so I decided instead of playing it safe to go all out to go scifi space and body horror because thats been done so few times. You can tell any story with these characters and some are light hearted and some are dark but honestly since issue one when they fought the mole man Reed Richards and Co were afraid of being freaks afraid of what to do in life and completely unsure of how to deal with it and I loved that aspect the people who have powers but are completely afraid; these are early days for the four they're not even the four yet and they never call themselves that but they for sure are the first family just a different one; this is Earth-Fox not Earth-616.

FANTASTIC FOUR: Josh Trank Lawyers Up As Shocking Details About His On Set Behaviour EmergeTelling actors when to blink? Hiding in a tent during shooting? Defacing photos of the family who owned the house he allegedly wrecked? These are just some of the insane new revelations which have surfaced in regards to Josh Trank's behaviour on the set of Fantastic Four... -*******************************************************************************************************

FLEMING: wrote:If the movie is broken, do not release it until you fix it, as hard as that is. If that means sacking the director and pulling it off the release calendar, do it. These films cost too much money and look at what Fox is left with. A big writeoff, and a tarnished intellectual property in Marvel’s wonderful Fantastic Four universe—I feel confident that done properly, depicting the battle between Silver Surfer and Galactus is far more cool and epic than Ant-Man or another iteration of Spider-Man. I don’t know how the rights work, but Sub-Mariner crossed over into the Fantastic Four world in the 1960s, and is far more interesting than DC’s Aquaman if you ask me. Fox has options on four terrific young actors in Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell that the studio now might not be able to use. I don’t think this movie deserved the blanket condemnation it got, and it is remarkable how quickly that built when Trank turned on it. I don’t see Fox giving the rights back to Marvel, as has been suggested, not when they could stoke the embers with a TV series or make a good movie with some real imagination that maybe places the focus on an ancillary character. Beg Bryan Singer to take it over; his first X-Men was probably the best example of how to tell a great story and lay the foundation for an enduring franchise. The first Captain America was okay, but it was far from hip until Joe and Anthony Russo got hold of it and turned the sequel into a towering success and Captain America into a rock star. You look at the first Wolverine film and it was roundly panned. And yet, all the characters introduced from Wolverine to Deadpool and Gambit will live on in other superhero movies. Just as is the case in the comics, it’s very hard to kill a superhero, even in Hollywood. But they came very close here.

Albert Ching wrote:Before we get to fan questions, the big entertainment news of the past week has been the "Fantastic Four" movie -- obviously that's a 20th Century Fox production Marvel didn't have direct involvement in -- emerging as a critical and financial disappointment upon release. I'm curious as to how this might affect the way the Fantastic Four are viewed internally at Marvel. I imagine there are three outcomes: This will make Marvel less likely to unveil a new "Fantastic Four" series, due to the notion it's a tainted property; it'll make Marvel more likely, because they want to prove to the world it's a viable concept and how to do it; or not affected at all, and that plans will just continue the way they were.

Alonso: Not affected at all. We have our plan. Whether the movie was a hit or a failure was irrelevant to us. We've got great stories to tell in the coming year, and "Secret Wars" sets the stage for them.

DEVIN FARACI wrote:Before Simon Kinberg came on as producer and to rewrite the film, Fantastic Four was a totally different beast. It took its early cues from the Ultimate Fantastic Four, but by the end of the script the movie was all about big, brash Stan Lee and Jack Kirby action. It’s the kind of script that you could imagine Marvel Studios making.

Max Landis Details More Of His FANTASTIC FOUR...TrilogyMax Landis goes in-depth on Josh Trank - they haven't spoken since Chronicle (2012), on his version of Doctor Doom - 'He and Reed are best friends' and his failed sequel plans for Chronicle 2 - 'It's very dark. It's one of my better scripts.'

I saw Fantastic Four and while it's not *quite* as disastrous as the negative reviews and bad publicity make it out to be, yeah, it's pretty bad.

You can tell that nobody knew what movie they were trying to make. Certain elements feel crammed-in, and re-writes and re-shoots clumsily stitched together. There's plenty of humor in the film, but none of it is funny. After a while it starts to be embarrassing. Dr. Doom's evil plan makes no sense. The biggest set piece takes place on a pile of rocks. I could go on.

The two scenes in the movie that really work involve the "body horror" that Trank talked up during production. I have no idea what a whole movie full of that would have looked like, and maybe that wouldn't have worked either, but at least those scenes weren't boring, which is more than I can say for the rest of it.

Ribbons wrote:The two scenes in the movie that really work involve the "body horror" that Trank talked up during production. I have no idea what a whole movie full of that would have looked like, and maybe that wouldn't have worked either, but at least those scenes weren't boring, which is more than I can say for the rest of it.

There's a scene right after the Four's powers manifest, before they learn how to control or manage them, and it's portrayed as scary and awful. The Human Torch is on fire and they can't put it out, Reed's limbs are all stretched out and he can't move his arms or legs, the Thing is stuck in a chunk of rocks, etc. Later on there's a scene where Doom is recovered from the Negative Zone (or Planet X or whatever they call it here) and you see the extent of the damage done to his body by severe burns, among other things. He enacts a bit of revenge by going on a rampage through the Baxter Building, literally exploding people's heads a la Scanners. I thought these scenes were pretty effective. They definitely shocked me and got my attention in a way that the rest of the movie didn't.

Tatiana Siegel wrote:What do you say to the criticism that you're spread too thin and it impacted Fantastic Four?

I was there every day on set of Fan Four, as I am on anything that I'm the writer and the producer of. Some movies work out and some don't. In my experience, there's not a direct corre­lation between the process and the product, meaning, I've been on some really hard movies, like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, where we shot a lot of reshoots that were very difficult days, as extensively reported — and in some places, accurately reported. So, I read stories about troubled movies and then I go see the movies and I'm like, "Wow, that movie turned out to be a great movie." There's a lot of crazy-talented writers, directors, actors who are difficult, and their films turn out great. And then there's some people who are lovely, wonderful human beings and the process is a joy, and the movie is flat. I don't subscribe to the idea that a happy process makes a happy product or an unhappy process makes a broken product. Also, the actual number of movies I'm working on is probably less than the average producer who has a deal at a studio.What really went wrong with Fantastic Four?

I haven't really done a full diagnosis. It was a hard movie to make, but I've made a lot of hard movies. I do think that there is a great Fantastic Four movie with that cast. But there's so many different elements that need to come together perfectly. It's like a collaboration between all these strangers. And if there's a few things that don't go right, it's hard to recover from. I went straight from that into Apocalypse. I haven't had a lot of time to decompress. I'm obviously disappointed with the way it turned out.Trank tweeted that his version of the movie was better than the one released. Did it hurt box office?

Honestly, I have no idea. I've had other movies not work before. For whatever reason, that movie not working became very public — and that was hard because you put a lot of time and effort and love into everything you do, and I really love a lot of people on that film and felt really close to the actors. Those are the guys whose faces are on the poster and are the most exposed. I hope we get to make more movies with them. But it was disappointing.Would you work with Trank again?

In the right context? Sure.Has there been talk about bringing in Marvel to revive Fantastic Four like Sony did for Spider-Man?

Toby Kebbell Talks FANTASTIC FOUR Failure; "The Fans Aren't Wrong"Fantastic Four star Toby Kebbell talks here for the first time about his experience playing Doctor Doom, weighing in on the way fans reacted to the reboot and dropping some interesting remarks about the behind the scenes issues which plagued the Josh Trank helmed release...

"I was disappointed, but the fans aren't wrong. The fans want what they want to see and if they don't get satisfaction, they let you know. I appreciate that as a performer. My job is to come in and perform as best I can, and hopefully be directed in that path, and I felt like I was. I felt like the film was going to go well. It didn't turn out that the fans felt that way, so their reaction is honest, I can only appreciate honesty."

"I don't know if I learned anything from Doom apart from perhaps when I see something I don't agree with, to voice that immediately. I think it's important. As an actor, you're conscious that your career is at stake with each job, especially on these larger productions. A film like that comes out, and I'm being sent maybe four scripts in a week, and those scripts go to zero when it doesn't come out successful, so that actively affects my career. I think it's vitally important that if there's a problem on set, that it's voiced and we solve it there and I think that collaboration is very important. Not to say that didn't happen on set, but the collaboration is vital and if we don't do that, then we suffer."

“We didn’t make a good movie,” Kinberg said, “and the world voted, and I think they probably voted correctly. And you can’t make a good movie every time out – not everybody does. We actually have a pretty good batting average, all things considered. But I think we made many mistakes when we made that movie – mistakes that we learned from and we wouldn’t repeat.”

So what’s the key difference between the original and a proposed sequel? Kinberg explains:

“We’ll try to be truer to the essence of the tone of Fantastic Four, which is completely – well, not completely, but largely – distinct from the X-Men, which is brighter, funner, more optimistic tone. I think we tried to make a darker Fantastic Four movie, which seemed like a radical idea but we were kind of messing with the DNA of the actual comic instead of trusting the DNA of the comic.”

Also, when it comes to a sequel, he would want to bring back the core cast:

“We want to make another Fantastic Four movie. We love that cast – I mean if I were to say to you now Michael B Jordan and Miles Teller, and Kate [Mara] and Jamie [Bell] are great actors – we love that cast. I love the comic, I mean I love it almost as much as X-Men.”

So what exactly are the chances of winning Fox over to the possibility of a Fantastic Four movie done right?

“We’re working really hard on figuring that out,” he said. “Nothing would make me happier than the world embracing a Fantastic Four movie.”

Kellvin Chavez wrote:LRM: Okay. What's up with Fantastic Four? ... And, Will Marvel ever consider helping out or getting involved with a Fox project just like they did with Sony?

Simon Kinberg: We haven't had any discussions with Marvel about them getting involved on any of the movies at Fox, as far as I know, and we, meaning me and Fox and Hutch Parker, who's producer too, have been talking a lot about what to do next with FANTASTIC FOUR. It's a super, super, super high priority for all of us, and for me personally, it's a super high priority because it really bums me out that we disappointed the fans and that we didn't make a great movie last time out. I think we learned a lot of lessons from that experience and lessons that we could bring to the next one and hopefully make a movie that is worthy of the title.

MATT GOLDBERG wrote:Slater says he liked the stuff with “lots of humor, lots of heart, lots of spectacle,” while Trank preferred something “grounded, gritty, and as realistic as possible.” And while these events basically take up the entirety of Trank’s movie with a rushed third act climax, Slater’s draft had a lot more material that was far more faithful to the comics:

In addition to Annihilus and the Negative Zone, we had Doctor Doom declaring war against the civilized world, the Mole Man unleashing a 60 foot genetically-engineered monster in downtown Manhattan, a commando raid on the Baxter Foundation, a Saving Private Ryan-style finale pitting our heroes against an army of Doombots in war-torn Latveria, and a post-credit teaser featuring Galactus and the Silver Surfer destroying an entire planet. We had monsters and aliens and Fantasticars and a cute spherical H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that was basically BB-8 two years before BB-8 ever existed. And if you think all of that sounds great…well, yeah, we did, too. The problem was, it would have also been massively, MASSIVELY expensive.

For his part, Slater doesn’t hold any ill will towards Trank or the studio, and he understands the studio economics at play:

“Would you spend $300 million on a Fantastic Four film?” he asked. “Particularly after the previous two films left a fairly bad taste in audiences’ mouths? … It’s understandable that everyone involved would take steps to minimize their risk as much as possible. Unfortunately, those steps probably compromised the film to a fatal degree.”

SIMON KINBERG: I don’t know the answer to that in terms of whether or not fans will ever see it. I think B-roll is probably the place where they will see it. And for us, it’s in the past in the sense of lessons learned and we would love to make another Fantastic Four movie. We really believe in that cast, and I think the lessons that we learned would help us make a more consistent movie than we did the first time.

That leads to the question of whether or not Fox has to keep making Fantastic Four movies in order to hold on to the rights. Kinberg replied:

KINBERG: I have no idea. I think the truth is we would not make another Fantastic Four movie until it was ready to be made. One of the lessons we learned on that movie is that we want to make sure we get it 100% right, because we will not get another chance with the fans.

To be blunt, while the reboot does have a talented cast, I think audiences don’t want to keep seeing Fantastic Four movies in the vein of a gritty, realistic take of teenagers who get superpowers. While I appreciate Kinberg’s desire to make sure they get a sequel right, I’m willing to bet that the next time we see a Fantastic Four movie, it will be with a different cast and a completely different approach.

ADAM CHITWOOD wrote:We’ll also likely see Fantastic Four come back in some form, because in order to keep its license and prevent the characters from reverting to Marvel Studios, Fox has to make some sort of Fantastic Four movie relatively soon.

Fievel wrote:Fox needs to cut out of the Fantastic Four game. Cut a deal with Marvel and wash their hands of the property.

the best thing for all involved. work out an agreement where FOX gets a cut of profits but give 100% creative control and distribution to Disney/Marvel. then work them in to the MCU after the dust settles from the next couple Avengers movies. that would be "phase 4" at that point, right?

ADAM CHITWOOD wrote:We’ll also likely see Fantastic Four come back in some form, because in order to keep its license and prevent the characters from reverting to Marvel Studios, Fox has to make some sort of Fantastic Four movie relatively soon.

Aaron Couch, Josh Wigler & Borys Kit wrote:The 'Legion' creator made the announcement at the show's Comic-Con panel.Fox has been eyeing ways to revive the Fantastic Four franchise for the big screen, and Legion creator Noah Hawley made one of those ways public Thursday at San Diego Comic-Con.

At the end of his panel for FX's Legion, Hawley teased that he is developing a movie for Fox that fans may be interested in.

"Two words," he said. "Doctor. Doom."

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Hawley is developing a feature project centering around one of Marvel Comics' most recognizable villains with an eye to direct.

The character is the chief antagonist of Marvel's Fantastic Four, the superteam created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to which Fox has the movie rights.

The Fantastic Four has had a somewhat troubled big-screen history. Tim Story directed the 2005 film Fantastic Four and the 2007 sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. While they were commercially successful, they were not quite embraced by fans. A 2015 reboot directed by Josh Trank was a critical and commercial bomb so damaging that it led to Trank being fired from a Star Wars spinoff.

Fox has been looking to reboot and reimagine the franchise after the lackluster performance of the 2015 outing, and another Fantastic Four movie would just not do, so the studio is looking at various angles. There are rumors that Seth Grahame-Smith is working on a Fantastic Four spinoff featuring Franklin Richards, the son of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl.

Victor Von Doom (aka Doctor Doom) is a scientific genius and totalitarian ruler of the fictional country of Latveria. He wears a metal mask to hide his disfigured face and rules his land with an iron fist. Julian McMahon played Doctor Doom in the first two films, while Toby Kebbell portrayed the character in the 2015 version.

The announcement came at the tail end of the first-ever Comic-Con panel for FX's X-Men drama Legion, which will return for its second season next year. Hawley also recently wrapped the third season of FX anthology Fargo, with the future of that franchise hinging on the prolific showrunner coming up with an idea for another cycle.